A 6-year-old boy spent 4 minutes riding his scooter alone through a local park. Child protective services found her parents ‘neglectful’.

• Mallory Shirley and Christopher Pleasant left their first grader scooter alone for a third of a mile. A stranger asked why he was alone.

• Days later, a case worker showed up at their door. The couple was found “neglected” by child services, but they contested the decision.

• A day after Business Insider contacted them for comment, the couple were told that the decision was found to be “unsubstantiated”.

Mallory Shirley and her husband, Christopher Pleasants, were delighted when their 6-year-old son asked if he could ride his electric scooter to a nearby park, which he had done before.

It was November 4, 2025, and he was off school for Election Day. It was nice for parents living in Atlanta to meet friends and their families at a fundraiser that benefits animals on the playground to get some fresh air.

They were both busy with household chores; The boy was a confident child, the weather was good, and it was a safe neighborhood.

He spent less than an hour at the playground, then, wearing a helmet, made the nearly 4-minute commute home — part of a 22-mile urban pedestrian, bicycling, and e-scooter trail called the Atlanta Beltline.

Then, he was stopped in a car by a stranger.

Shirley said she could see the road from her house

The first-grader later told his parents that the man in the car asked them where they were, his name, age, and if he lived nearby. He went home without saying anything.

Shirley, a software engineering manager, said he looked shaken when he arrived.

“He was very upset because he was used to being independent,” she told Business Insider. “We always encouraged him to be independent.”

The 39-year-old said her level of independence is in line with the advanced maturity she has seen for a child her age. He believed he rode about 0.3 miles on the Beltline, which he could see from his home.

“We know our son better than anyone and he’s fine with him going such a short distance on a path full of people walking and bicycling,” Shirley said in the first interview with media outlet Reason.

She said he had traveled at least twice since September, when they first allowed him to do so.

The family put the incident with the stranger behind them. Two days later, while Shirley was out, Pleasants, 38, answered the door to a child welfare worker.

The Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) had received a report that her son had been seen on his scooter, and that this was a regular occurrence.

A spokesperson for DFCS in Georgia told Business Insider the agency is “obligated by state and federal law to protect the privacy of the people we serve. As such, we are unable to comment on the details of any reported cases of abuse or neglect.”

They added, “We take every report to the agency seriously and work with law enforcement when appropriate to ensure the safety of Georgia’s children.”

Pleasants, the AI ​​research manager, said the investigator who visited the home said authorities believed the boy was too young to be in the park alone and classified the situation as “inadequate supervision” because “something could happen.”

The astonished father responded that his son was independent and mature enough to travel.

The parents said they reluctantly signed the “safety plan”.

Pleasants let the case worker into her home, where she photographed the contents of the refrigerator and the bedrooms of her son and 3-year-old daughter.

The parents later heard from teachers that a caseworker had interviewed the boy at their school and also dropped off his sister in sister care that same day.

That afternoon, Pleasants, Shirley and the maid had a series of frantic phone calls. It ended with the parents—reluctantly, they say—signing a “safety plan,” which said the children would be supervised at all times.

“We thought things would get worse if we didn’t comply,” Shirley said. They were told that the investigation into their case was ongoing and that there was no possible date for the lifting of the protection plan.

The couple immediately forbade their son from playing outside the house or cycling to friends’ houses. They are afraid that someone will file a complaint against them. “He went stir-crazy, but we didn’t tell him what was going on if it bothered him,” Shirley said.

She said she and her husband were “data-driven people” who established that child abductions by strangers were extremely rare, compared to abductions by people the child knew.

They sought their parental rights. They were aware of a bill passed in Georgia in May 2025 that protects the right of parents to give their children freedom, and they examined the law more closely.

Shirley and the Pleasants thought that DFCS had no basis for calling them “neglected.”

The Fair Childhood Freedom Act amended the definition of neglect to place a child at “a real, significant, and imminent risk of harm that would be so clear … that a legal guardian acting reasonably would not place the child at imminent risk of harm.”

It also ruled that “independent activity … shall include, but not be limited to, playing alone indoors or outdoors, or with other children, walking to school, running errands, or traveling to local commercial or recreational facilities.”

The law — which does not specify what age a child must be — led the couple to believe there was no basis to find DFCS liable for neglect.

They were wrong.

They opened a letter from the agency on December 30, 2025, about two months after the incident. It said the authorities had justified the finding of negligence “by a preponderance of the evidence”.

“My heart pounding and drowning don’t even describe it,” said Shirley, who petitioned for an immediate administrative review of the negligence decision. “It was like dropping a bowling ball into an empty well. I experienced real anxiety for the first time in my life and couldn’t sleep.”

As the case continued in January, the couple contacted attorney David Delugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that helps families in similar situations.

He supported Shirley and Pleasants’ request for review by DFCS. He also lodged a complaint with the Children’s Advocate Office.

“Maleri and Christopher’s children are their children to raise,” the lawyer told Business Insider. “DFCS used his son’s age alone as if all children everywhere in Georgia were the same age.”

“Despite the absence of harm, danger, or neglect, DFCS made a determination of negligence, using precious resources intended for those children who are truly at risk,” Delugas told Business Insider.

The couple’s attorney said their records would not be expunged

A day after Business Insider contacted DFCS for comment, Shirley received a phone call from a case manager who said the initial finding of negligence was not substantiated. It was unclear whether the protection plan was removed as a result, but the family wants to know when they will receive the official letter, which the case manager said DFCS will send.

Delugas said that, regardless of what the letter says, the report on Shirley and Pleasants’ case will not be removed.

“Allegations and investigations of neglect, and photographs of their homes and interviews of their children, will not be removed from the DSCS system,” Delugas said. “If there is a second report of alleged neglect or lack of supervision, case managers will still consider the family’s record.”

“It’s the constant worry that keeps us from raising our children the way we want them to be, to give them independence and independence,” Shirley said.

Do you have a childhood freedom story? Please email Jane Ridley at jridley@businessinsider.com

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